


A Good Dream

by Mikazuki_Nika



Series: Nika's Banana Fish Oneshots [2]
Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, a look into the librarians mind, heavy angst ok, immediate post-canon, why didn't she wake him up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 01:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15697656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikazuki_Nika/pseuds/Mikazuki_Nika
Summary: "-Guess it's a good dream. Aw, let him enjoy it." She sighed helplessly.Little did she know that she had bore witness to the start of an eternal dream.Immediate post-canon in the library.





	A Good Dream

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**Oneshot: A Good Dream**

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**Normal POV**

“-Guess it’s a good dream. Aw, let him enjoy it.” She sighed helplessly, and turned at the sound of a voice asking for her help.

The woman, tall-looking in her stocky, solid black professional heels, made her rounds through the library. Her short cropped dirty blonde hair gave her a strict air that, when combined with a stern expression, helped her to cease the running of children or the loud laughter of obnoxious teenagers. However, when her face was calm, she was the picture of a reliable and helpful librarian to everyone.

Of course, she wasn't the only person working there, but _she_ had been a witness to the last few moments of a man’s life.

It happened when someone noticed dark, almost black, and thick blotches of liquid at the edge of his chair. They had approached the sleeping beauty and seen the strange marks on the papers tucked carefully under his arms. Shaking his shoulder and calling out to him seemed to do nothing.

He did not wake.

Before she could process what was going on, the library was already in chaos. People were gathering around the long wooden table he sat at all alone. Someone was screaming, a child was crying, the chatter escalated into yells.

Someone called the police.

They found out later that the ambulance wasn't needed after all.

The library was cleared out of everyone who had nothing to do with the man. The police restored quiet to the scene and closed the building, ignoring the crowds outside that demanded to know what had happened. She stood quietly next to her coworkers, and her boss, all lined up in their matching professional uniforms. Silence reigned in her mind even as the police force members murmured instructions and observations to each other.

“Did any one of you speak to this boy?” The inspector asked. He was a portly, short man in an aged brown suit that distinguished him from the rest of his uniformed men. Another man, tall and thin with bright orange hair, stood at his back.

Their faces were dark.

She clasped her hands in front of her tightly and stepped forward, ignoring the eyes of her friends. “I did… sort of.” She answered, gaze locked onto the once gleaming floor that seemed so dull to her now. 

They led her to a table slightly farther away from the scene and her coworker’s earshot. It was identical to the table the young man had died at.

She stared at the wood.

“My name is Jenkins.” Began the man, and his voice struggled to cut through her racing thoughts. “And this is detective Charlie Dickinson.”

She looked up and shook their hands, quietly giving her own name and nervously pressing her knees together under the table. 

“Can you tell us what happened here today?”

She bit her lip and began to describe her short interaction with the young man. They listened carefully to her explanation. “But when I saw him smiling like that, for some reason, I just couldn’t…” Her voice caught in her throat. “I couldn't wake him.” She finished with a whisper.

The men in front of her were silent. She noticed that Jenkins was looking down at his laced-together hands on the table, his expression unreadable. Detective Dickinson looked devastated and completely shut down. A question rose in her mind through the chaos.

“Did-” Her voice died so she cleared her throat, and they looked up at her again. “Did you… know him?” She whispered, afraid of the answer.

Detective Dickinson looked up at the ceiling, as though asking for God, and Inspector Jenkins looked as though he had swallowed a stone.

“Well, in a way, yes.” The detective admitted, not looking at her. His gaze was on the table, like hers had been earlier, but she could see that his mind was racing with memories instead of thoughts.

Jenkins didn't look happy that the detective had said anything, but he sighed in defeat.

And then she heard a little bit of his story.

A victim, they called him. A victim of the streets and the ugliness of humanity. She remembered the articles on him months ago when they had _first_ believed he had died. Ash Lynx. A genius and a fearsome leader of the street gangs of New York, but only a boy. He had friends, a companion, they said, and other people who loved and admired him, but he was all alone in the world. He was a nightmare with a gun, and an angel with a kind heart.

But as he bled out slowly, in deep pain, he slept peacefully. Smiling.

She asked them why.

They didn't know either.

Then they let her go, and she was taking wobbly steps back to the familiar faces of her coworkers, but strangely enough they were no comfort. After reassuring them she was okay, she peeled away from them too, and sat at a table far away from the scene. 

The sun was setting.

She stared, feeling far away, at the furious pink light streaming in through the large paneled windows. Earlier, it had been such a calming yellow. Now the room was dyed in vivid rose, as though she were looking through those popular tinted sunglasses that were too round for her long face and didn't suit her at all.

He was gorgeous.

That was why she had let him go.

As much as she hated to admit it, like most women, she loved pretty faces. And _his_ was one of the prettiest she had ever seen. Long, blonde lashes and gold hair that laid gently on his head in soft layers. The sharp lines of his jaw and nose were softened like butter by the sweet smile on his full, pink lips. His cheek was laid carefully on an arm clad in a stylish jacket.

If she were a more confident and selfish woman, she would have woken him just to talk to him and find out what color his eyes were.

But he was still just a boy. That much, she could tell by the leftover baby fat on his cheekbones. She wondered to herself, almost disbelieving, how she had noticed everything about his face and nothing about his pain or blood.

Perhaps she really was a selfish woman.

The light changed from that electric pink to a dreamy purple. She had never been in the library this late before, considering that her shift began in the early morning and ended in the afternoon, and she realized she resented the fact a little. Her eyes wandered around the gleaming wooden tables and the twinkling of the lamps and chandeliers, and the slightly dusty bookshelves with rows upon rows of different books, all dyed in that gentle, dream-like twilight purple.

It was beautiful. 

And he would never see it.

Later, when the police let her go and she was walking away, her weak ankles and her thick black heels somehow supporting her, the inspector and detective she had spoken to stopped her.

This time, it was the inspector that was willing to talk. But he didn’t look at her. “Earlier, you asked us why.”

She waited, silently, feeling as though she were at a crossroads.

“It's because he wasn't alone.”

And tears of regret streamed down her face.

**Author's Note:**

> Words cannot express how sad I am right now.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Good Dream [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234658) by [Mikazuki_Nika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikazuki_Nika/pseuds/Mikazuki_Nika), [TrashAYfanfiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashAYfanfiction/pseuds/TrashAYfanfiction)




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